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A review by bittersweet_symphony
Lost Connections: Why You're Depressed and How to Find Hope by Johann Hari
3.0
Hari starts out strong, liberating the individual from the tragic misunderstanding that depression and anxiety are merely chemical imbalances, results of a broken brain. He hints that our real problems reside with our stories; our narratives about our pain are broken. Just as one thinks Hari is going to offer individual, personally empowering solutions to broken worldviews, he shackles and distracts. He includes several perplexing chapters on public policy changes, making the mistake of focusing the remainder of his book on external problems.
He aims to free people from depression and anxiety, but ends up telling a story in which our well-being depends on factors beyond our control. He demands that we must embrace a handful of illiberal progressive policies before "we" can overcome depression. He has a strange bias against individualism and conflates materialism and consumerism with capitalism. He doesn't even entertain the possibility that there are many who embrace individualism without falling prey to egoism.
I deeply appreciate his criticism of purely medical-material explanations for depression and anxiety. I commend him for including chapters on meditation and connection with nature, but, sadly, his book contains almost no treatment of psychological solutions. He emphasizes societal level prescriptions which leave the individual powerless waiting for a utopian change in the structure of society.
The book felt more like a bait and switch. I'd read the first few chapters where he frees us of purely biological explanations for emotional well-being, and then I'd move onto something more personally useful, like Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism.
He aims to free people from depression and anxiety, but ends up telling a story in which our well-being depends on factors beyond our control. He demands that we must embrace a handful of illiberal progressive policies before "we" can overcome depression. He has a strange bias against individualism and conflates materialism and consumerism with capitalism. He doesn't even entertain the possibility that there are many who embrace individualism without falling prey to egoism.
I deeply appreciate his criticism of purely medical-material explanations for depression and anxiety. I commend him for including chapters on meditation and connection with nature, but, sadly, his book contains almost no treatment of psychological solutions. He emphasizes societal level prescriptions which leave the individual powerless waiting for a utopian change in the structure of society.
The book felt more like a bait and switch. I'd read the first few chapters where he frees us of purely biological explanations for emotional well-being, and then I'd move onto something more personally useful, like Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism.